inside, your cover's always blown
by teethlikedog
Summary: Nobody here but us chickens. Walter/Daniel.


Slash, wangst and tortuous mask metaphors. Title by Interpol. Basic summary: Walter makes a mask. Walter meets Dan. Walter hates himself.

**inside, your cover's always blown**

The newspaper on the table is three days old, edges crumpled and creases crazing the surface where fingers clenched too tightly, newsprint smearing to grey but the headline remains the same. Fabric slides like water through his hands, black swimming through white, always changing but never mixing and Walter thinks there is something here he can use. Shears come smoking out of the flame and there is a simple knack to cutting cleanly, blots sliding away from the heat and gathering against new seams. Walter cannot understand how anyone could think this ugly.

(It was ugly the first time, cold blades and liquid bleeding sluggishly from the ragged cuts, viscous white seeping like fluid from a punctured eye, but that was his fault. He's learned since then.)

When it is done, cut and shaped and sewn, he slides the mask over his face and it feels like something slotting into place. Like the piece of the puzzle you never even knew was missing. And when he looks in the mirror, sees the blankness looking back, strange expressiveness of it, he feels like himself for what seems like the first time ever.

Things look clearer through the mask. Not _cleaner_, but simpler, the greys of the world separating into stark black and white, leaving no ambiguity about what is to be done. Strange, how Rorschach can have the certainty of purpose that Walter Kovacs so often lacks. And when he takes it to the streets he feels alive as he never has before, alert and aware of everything. Subway trains thrum beneath his feet like a rattling pulse, hiss of steam from the grates like hot slow breaths, like some vast and scaly dragon lying asleep below the streets of New York.

(He believed in monsters once. Seven years old, lying in the dark and listening to the noises _(thumping, groaning)_ from the next room; trying not to breathe and hoping he'd be asleep when it came to swallow him up. Things are different now; in its darkest places, this city is his.)

The first night criminals laugh _(is it Hallowe'en already?)_, still naive enough not to fear a masked and unarmed man. The simple physicality of violence makes sense to Walter in a way that so much of this world doesn't, and standing there afterwards, fists clenched and panting with exhilaration, he knows that he can do this. That he was meant to do this.

Word travels fast. In a week, no one's laughing at all.

He knows there are others like him, sees their pictures in the paper and hears their feats announced on radio news bulletins. He never expects to meet any of them. Their exploits smack of the theatrical, foiled bank heists and fist-fights with costumed villains while he's down in the gutters with the real scum of New York. Wish fulfillment fantasies, defined with sharp lines and comic book morals. His is a very different world to theirs, a grimier world, and perhaps he's the only one not afraid to get his hands dirty. Down in the underworld, Rorschach's mask, Rorschach's justice, are the only black and white.

(Walter sometimes thinks that there's no way to make a difference, the streets a bottomless pit of corruption and the deeper you dig, all you get is dirtier. Rorschach never lets himself think it for long.)

Four months in he meets a man in an owl costume down an alleyway, a gang of thugs laid out cold between them and the would-be victim sobbing against a wall, and Walter begins to think that maybe he's not the only one with the guts to wade in the mire. And then he meets Nite Owl again (staking out a dope factory) and again (raiding a child pornographer's studio) and again (in the middle of a gang fight) and it ends up with Nite Owl laughing through a split lip and saying: "This is stupid!" and proposing they work together. Walter doesn't laugh, but he can concede that maybe - _maybe_ - cooperation would benefit them both. He can try it.

---

It's a strange thing, having a partner. Their _modi operandi_ could hardly be more different: Nite Owl with his gadgetry and careful approach, reconnaissance and calculation and softly-softly methods that Walter doesn't understand or subscribe to. When he needs information he finds a suitable source and simply extracts it, decides what needs to be done and then applies the precise amount of force and skill necessary to achieve his end. Somehow, though, their contrasting methods work together, complementary rather than compromising, black threading through white and never going grey. _They_ work together.

Still, it's strange. Nite Owl is a good man, an honourable man but Walter cannot easily match his jovial camaraderie; he trusts Nite Owl to provide solid information and to watch his back in a fight, but that's as far as it can go. Rorschach can't afford to rely on anyone, and Walter reminds himself of this on every patrol, after every successful bust, every time Nite Owl tells him something small and personal and unimportant that leaves him wondering _why_?

(He is stitching a jagged wound in Walter's upper arm, fingers sliding in the blood and he laughs and says: "My mom insisted I learn how to sew, said it was a good skill for a man to have. I guess I never really believed her until now," and how can he give bits of himself away like this, as if he trusts Walter with them? How can that be okay?)

And then one night they close out a case that's taken weeks, one of New York's most insidious drug rings beheaded and crumbling. They're in the Owlship, exhausted and elated and both full of fierce energy, and Nite Owl mutters: "Oh hell," and yanks off his goggles and cowl, sticks his hand out like a challenge and says: "Daniel Dreiberg". Does it so easily, and for one crazy moment Walter wants nothing more than to return the gesture, show Nite Owl - _Daniel_ - the same sort of trust. But he doesn't, because Walter Kovacs is not anything that Rorschach is, and there's nothing about Walter that's worth showing Daniel. Nothing he can give Daniel at all. Instead he just shakes Daniel's hand silently, and pretends not to see the slight disappointment in his unmasked face.

---

Walter never feels, as others seem to, that the mask hides his face. Instead it is his true face, his true self, free from the weakness and vice of his other life, the thousand little crimes of thought and deed that plague Walter Kovacs, all absent in Rorschach.

(At thirteen he dreamt of a monster with two backs chasing him down obscene hallways, fleshy and grunting. Now he dreams of faceless enemies and the solidity of Daniel's shoulder against his; wakes sick and trembling, nails digging into his palms for long, desperate minutes. Just adrenaline, he tells himself, a natural if distasteful bodily reaction. In time he almost believes it.)

There is a strength to being Rorschach that Walter sometimes wishes he could hold onto. It isn't the fear on criminals' faces or the satisfactory snapping of a bone, but the certainty of purpose, the knowledge that justice can always be done, if he is only determined enough. Sometimes he wants to lose himself in that certainty, to become Rorschach entirely, but he knows that's not possible; it would mean breaking either himself or the world.

---

Things get bad. A new faction hits New York's underworld and suddenly all the gangs are jostling for position, fighting like starved dogs with a bone. Hackles-raised intimidation, kneecaps broken and shootings in the streets, dealers dumped in the river and pimps muscled out of town. Even small time bosses like the Twilight Lady are feeling the push, so Daniel says, and Walter doesn't ask where his information comes from. One name keeps coming up with the worst atrocities, one name on every scumbag's lips: Big Figure. They go after him, take out his lieutenants and interrogate his gophers, but nobody they talk to has ever seen him.

(Daniel argues that he probably doesn't even exist, just an invented figurehead for a gang looking to make their reputation. No one man could be responsible for everything the Figure's credited with. Walter shrugs his protests off; he knows too well what men are capable of.)

They get a tip: a dope shipment, Big Figure personally overseeing the delivery. What else can they do? The instant they make their entrance, half the black-suited goons are hustling someone out the back door while the rest pull assorted weaponry and charge. Walter knows his target, is half way to the door when he hears the crack and Nite Owl's small grunt of pain, glances around to see Daniel crumpling to the floor and a thug looming over him with a length of pipe in one hand, feels a stab of what might be terror in his gut.

(What else can he do?)

He gets Daniel back to the Owlship and determines that there's no bullet wound, only a lucky blow to the head by a guy Nite Owl could have floored with one finger. The unfamiliar panicked sensation is subsiding, but his hands are still less steady than he'd like when he pulls off the cowl and goggles, checks Daniel's pupils and his skull. Easier with the glove removed, to search around the contusion for cracks or bleeding, pushing fingers through Daniel's thick hair. Strange, the texture of it, rough and smooth all at once, and Walter cannot remember another time when he touched someone else's hair. His fingers sift through the strands carefully, memorising the feel of it, and this is wrong he knows but it's okay because Daniel is unconscious, Daniel will never know what Walter's done to him, Daniel is...

(Awake, eyes blinking muzzily up at him and his hand freezes against Daniel's head and, perversely, the only thing he can think of is a joke he once heard. A pair of thieves bagging chickens in a barn and the farmer hears the commotion, comes down with his shotgun cocked and yelling "I know you're in there!" and "Come on out afore I blow your heads off!" The thieves cowering behind a bale of hay with the birds squawking and fluttering around them, and the farmer shouts "Last chance!" and fires a shot in the air and one of the hidden men, with the inspiration of sheer terror, yells back: "There ain't nobody here but us chickens!"

He never much liked that joke.)

Daniel is pushing away and sitting up, staring at him with wide eyes and oh god what has he done?

"Rorschach?" he says very quietly and Walter starts to say: "Had to check for head injuries" but his mouth is too dry and besides he's already wronged Daniel enough without lying to him too. He stays very still and waits, willing to take whatever's coming to him; his own fault for giving himself away, he deserves anything Daniel does now. He does not flinch when Daniel's hands come up to his throat, except Daniel's fingers are not closing over his windpipe but instead catching the edges of his mask, pulling it carefully upward. It slides over Walter's chin and he takes a sharp breath as his mouth is exposed but the mask only rolls up to his nose and stops there, Daniel's gloved fingers resting lightly on his jaw, Daniel looking at him with eyes that are not angry or frightened or disgusted.

"Daniel - " he says in a voice that's hardly more than a whimper, a last desperate effort to stop this because this is his sin, his sickness, and he won't drag Daniel down with him. Daniel doesn't understand. Daniel says: "Oh," in a tone that's soft and almost surprised, and then Daniel kisses him.

(Daniel's lips are dry and Daniel's mouth is tentative and Daniel's fingers are trembling and something deep inside Walter twists painfully and he wants, oh god, he _wants_. But he couldn't show Daniel his face and he can't do this now, because this shame and weakness is all Walter Kovacs has to offer, all that he'll ever be worth. There is nothing he can give Daniel, except Rorschach.)

He pulls away and stands up, tugs his mask back down and turns his back and walks out without a word. He does not look back. He spends the next three nights beating criminals with a brutality that startles even him. He does not think about anything.

---

Two weeks later he meets Nite Owl on patrol, who nods and says: "Haven't seen you around lately".

"Been busy," he replies.

"I've got a lead on the Big Figure," Nite Owl tells him, almost hesitant. "I don't know if it'll come to anything, but I could use your help. If you can," he finishes awkwardly. Walter nods. They're a good team, Rorschach and Nite Owl, work well together. Too well to let it fall apart.

"I can," he says.

(He can. Rorschach can. They're a good team, that's all.)

"Great," says Daniel, and smiles brilliantly at him; Walter tugs the mask tighter and thinks: _nobody here._


End file.
